


Some Strange, Presumptuous Way

by satonawall



Category: North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell | UK TV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4980337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satonawall/pseuds/satonawall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their wedding, they take a carriage home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Strange, Presumptuous Way

**Author's Note:**

> My edit notes to myself about this were, "Needs more purple prose about Margaret Hale's beautiful face." I don't quite think I succeeded, but I guess you've been warned anyway.

He could barely bring himself to look at her.

He simply wasn't able to look away from her at all.

Margaret seemed utterly unaware of the fierce battle in his heart, looking out the small window of the carriage as they passed by familiar streets, her face content and her blue eyes peaceful. Her expression reminded him of that day, that wonderful day when those enigmatic eyes had held his gaze at the train station, then looked away only for her soft lips to kiss his hand and for her proud head to tilt just right to welcome and return his embrace (he would only regret his impropriety if she would, and she had assured him, with sweet certainty, that she never could) and then, right as he'd told his crushed heart that he'd lost her again, appeared in a train window like some ephemeral ghost from his imagination before allowing him to take her very real hand and aid her up into the carriage so that they could return to Milton together. She'd spent much of that journey looking out the window, and perhaps he might have worried, had he not lost the capacity altogether, as he watched her watch the passing landscape. His head had been much too filled with the warmth of her hand against his, the weight of her skirts that were resting partially on his thigh and the small smile curving up her beautiful mouth, of which he now knew the taste, to think of anything but her.

She'd told him later she'd been thinking of her family's journey to Milton. It had been a pleasant recollection, she'd insisted even as the corners of her mouth fell down in memory of her dearly departed parents.

He doubted she was thinking of them right then. She was smiling at the houses like each of them brought only pleasant memories, her small mouth as if perpetually fixed to the sweetest smile he'd ever seen, a few curls that had escaped her carefully done hair framing her face.

And her eyes. He couldn’t decide if he'd rather she look at him or not, but as long as all he could detect in her expressive eyes was the simple yet profound happiness present there right then, he couldn't really bring himself to care. Perhaps, had such a look been shown his way, his own happiness would have become too overwhelming. It certainly felt so now, just looking at her serene face, so he dropped his gaze to her lap.

That choice, however, was perhaps even worse, for amidst the mint green fabric of her newest dress, made for the occasion (she'd laughed her happiest, pearly laugh when the matter had come up, saying his mother had absolutely insisted on a new dress, positively horrified at her wish to simply wear an old favourite to her own wedding), almost hidden by the plentiful cotton, was her left hand, and on her left hand, he could easily make out the line of the ring, and only the smallest hint of that piece of jewellery would have been enough to make his emotions flow over completely.

He glanced down at his own lap, but that made it worse, for the sight of his own ringless finger could only serve to remind him that visible or not, his spirit had definitely been marked by her as hers just as surely as his ring on her finger marked her as his. Even more so, for she could take off the ring in mere seconds, but her mark on his soul would be there forever.

"You should speak," Margaret said, startling him out of his thoughts and making him look up at her, the sight of happiness and joy in her bright eyes not doing much to calm down his poor, overexcited heart. "Looking at you, I'm afraid you will burst otherwise."

"I didn't know you were looking at me," he said, reaching for her hand and taking it just because he could. He perhaps shouldn't have; he could feel the metal and stone of the ring, warmed by her hand (she'd been his wife for less than an hour, but the ring already felt like she’d woken up that morning wearing it, like it had been hers just as long as his heart had; he felt foolish just thinking such a deliciously romantic thing), against his own skin. Then again, he thought as he looked at her once again, from now on he must always remember how much he had been given; how could the small pleasure of holding her hand incapacitate him when the utter exhilaration of knowing he was married to her, he was loved by her, did not?

"I'm always looking at you," she said, squeezing her hand around his fingers so that it felt more like she was the one to be holding his hand than the other way around. She moved slightly, nudging her arm against his as her smile grew, lighting up her whole face. "I want to make up for the one time I did not, and it is always better to start early."

John swallowed at the memory of that formerly so bleak a day that now simply felt too far away to be real, the sad melodrama of her leaving Milton having lost much of its depressive qualities at her triumphant return on his arm, and then shivered at another, far more pleasant memory of her laughter as he’d entrusted her with a description of his behaviour that day (“I almost cried, John, I almost cried because in front of Aunt Shaw because I hated to leave Milton with your opinion of me so low, and all the while you- I’m sorry, I cannot stop laughing, I swear I am not mocking you.”), told in quiet, passionate voices in the corner of the Thornton family library with his mother sewing just some feet away and pretending not to listen. Other than that, he could only smile as he looked at her twinkling eyes.

"Besides," she said after a moment, "I can hardly look anywhere in Milton without feeling like I am looking at you. It is silly, perhaps, but whatever the view, I still think of you. I think I always have."

John would have answered, but his throat felt curiously constricted and he could barely speak from the happy lump in his throat.

"You shouldn't look so worried," she told him next, the teasing in her voice making it obvious that she hadn't misunderstood his silence. “They are happy thoughts, have been for quite a while.” Some other time, her words would have been a reminder that her unhappiness during her first months in Milton had found its personification in him as well, but today his heart was too full of love to give any room to insecurity. How could he, when her gentle fingers were curling around his hand and both her eyes and mouth were smiling so openly?

“If you’re trying to lessen my happiness so as to stop me from bursting from it,” he said, brushing his thumb over her knuckles, “I’m afraid you’re doing a rather poor job of it.”

She smiled at him then, a quick, mischievous look, and raised their joined hands to her sweet lips, the spark in her eye telling him that the reminiscence of the gesture from that day on the train station (always _the_ train station in his mind, never mind the fact that neither of them could actually have named it if asked) was entirely intentional.

“Well,” she said, his hand in her lap now along with her own, “I will have to practice then.”

“I am afraid you’re always going to fail most miserably.” He looked at their hands once again, far too overwhelmed to meet her eye.

“Hmm.” She ran her thumb along his skin. He closed his eyes, and his whole body felt like it was on fire. “In that case, I will simply have to contend to always keep you in such a state of happiness that you do not pay attention to my constant failing.”

He didn’t know what he continued to breathe in and out; it certainly felt like there was no air.

“I highly doubt you’ll even need to try.”

She laughed and leaned forwards, and the ensuing delicious silence only came to an end when the carriage stopped before Marlborough Mills.


End file.
